In vitro screening of compounds from the Food and Drug Administration-approved library identifies anti-Babesia gibsoni activity of idarubicin hydrochloride and vorinostat

Babesia gibsoni is mainly transmitted by hard ticks of the genus Rhipicephalus (R. sanguineus) and Haemaphysalis (H. longicornis), and causes canine babesiosis. Clinical manifestations of B. gibsoni infection include fever, hemoglobinemia, hemoglobinuria, and progressive anemia. Traditional antibabesial therapy, such as imidocarb dipropionate or diminazene aceturate, can only alleviate severe clinical manifestations and cannot eliminate parasites in the host. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved drugs are a solid starting point for researching novel therapy strategies for canine babesiosis. In this work, we screened 640 FDA-approved drugs against the growth of B. gibsoni in vitro. Among them, 13 compounds (at 10 μM) exhibited high growth inhibition (>60%), and two compounds, namely idarubicin hydrochloride (idamycin) and vorinostat, were chosen for further investigation. The half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) values of idamycin and vorinostat were determined to be 0.044 ± 0.008 μM and 0.591 ± 0.107 μM, respectively. Viability results indicated that a concentration of 4 × IC50 of vorinostat prevented the regrowth of treated B. gibsoni, whereas parasites treated with 4 × IC50 concentration of idamycin remained viable. The B. gibsoni parasites treated with vorinostat exhibited degeneration within erythrocytes and merozoites, in contrast to the oval or signet-ring shape of normal B. gibsoni parasites. In conclusion, FDA-approved drugs offer a valuable platform for drug repositioning in antibabesiosis research. Particularly, vorinostat demonstrated promising inhibitory effects against B. gibsoni in vitro, and further studies on vorinostat are necessary to elucidate its mechanism as a novel treatment in infected animal models.